a few species of Chrysobothris jewel beetles from central america. source
A dozen pages from the makeshift grimoire! I thought it time that I start sharing more of this project
Fisherman balance fish on their heads
Location: St. Lucia
Photographer: Luis Marden
I don't mean any of this in a weird way but if we're interested in breaking down binaries, we can't cling onto the binary of cis versus trans. If gender expectations are as constrictive as we say they are, then this imagined class of people who are okay with gender expectations 100% of the time with no complications is just that. Imagined. It's similar to "neurotypical" as an imagined class of people who are completely comfortable with the social and mental expectations of their jobs and would never understand what it's like to get overwhelmed or feel out of place. The unintended implication is an obsession with labelling and pathologizing that says that it's not gender or workplace norms that need to be interrogated, it's you.
The truth is that you can be outside the binary without formally committing to calling yourself nonbinary. I am a cis gay man who feels most comfortable and affirmed when I'm free to wear earrings and garments I bought in the "women's" section. I tell people my pronouns are he/him because it's the simplest explanation, but they/them and even she/her are comfortable, even validating, in the right circumstances. There are a lot of cis gay men just like me. Am I actually nonbinary and just in denial? No. Being a gay man is deeply meaningful to me. Am I encouraging nonbinary to start calling themselves cis and questioning whether they're actually nonbinary? No, and I feel more comfortable in my own manhood knowing I have the option to leave. I just want us all to define ourselves on our own terms. I want celebrate common ground and shared queerness with trans people and not have to overstate our differences. We treat it as a political and moral obligation to fine tune our labels for the sake of establishing who's allowed to say what, who's allowed to relate to who, and I have to ask: Are we committed to breaking down boundaries or not?
Antique Mother of Pearl Palais Royal Greyhound Needle Case Circa 1820.
George Catlin - Portraits of a Grizzly Bear (1846-48)
you have to let "dennys parking lot at 3 am" go. you have to think independently. you have to come up with your own strange places, and indeed your own strange times to be there. there's authenticity in that
Hey man when you got struck by lightning we all saw your skeleton and it.was really effeminate and demure.
I'm not a Born in the Wrong Generation type person for anything except that I know my calling was to be an evil vizier. I'm so fucking mad I will never have a chance to give a flourish and a deep bow and creep back into the shadows with flashing eyes and say shit like "your wish is my command," I will never poison the sultan's rose water tea, I will never be the most cunning and sharp-tongued eunuch in the imperial court, I will never share schemes with the courtesans and jealous servants with my mouth coyly concealed behind a hand mirror, I will never know the dark joy of kinslaying my golden-haired brother the jarl while hunting a white hart in the old woods, I will never be the black-veiled empress-dowager manipulating my kind-hearted but weak and oafish son on the throne, fuck fuck fuck fuck!!!
a springtail slime mold buffet !!
Hieronymus Bosch-inspired embroidery at Alexander McQueen Spring/Summer 2023
